Gardening

Anchorage gardeners are losing a dedicated public servant

I know my normal pattern is to hold down the personal, political commentary to one column a year and that at the very end. However, given the course of current events, I simply cannot pass the opportunity to add my 2 cents to a very sad situation and then, to give you a very important invitation I hope you will accept.

For more than 30 years we have all followed the career of a real public servant, a truly dedicated worker for the things we all love and strive for in our daily lives. After all of these years, she is now going away because of I don't know what. All I know is that we are all going to be much poorer as a result. This is a real loss, for Republicans as well as Democrats, and we may never recover.

Uh-oh. As I reread those last words, I realize readers might think I am speaking about a certain politician and I was dipping my toe into the election results. So sorry!

The woman we are losing is none other than the Julie Riley, Cooperative Extension Agent Extraordinaire. As you know, the Fairbanks powers that run Alaska's Cooperative Extension Service are heavily downgrading (and moving) the Anchorage office and that means destaffing. Julie Riley, alas, after some 32 years, is being transferred to Fairbanks.

Ah, but I am not here to write about the shortsighted, wrong decision to downsize the state's most active and important CES office (much of that due to Julie's untiring efforts to help the public), but rather extend to you an invitation. There is a big good-bye party planned for Julie, this Sunday, Nov. 20, at Fox Hollow (more details in the calendar below). This is our chance to show Julie Riley how much she has meant to gardening, to Anchorage and to us.

Julie has touched so many of our lives it will take a party of her friends just for her to be able to say good-bye to all of us. Just think about it. For the past 32 years, every single Master Gardener graduated and certified from this area has passed as a result of Julie's tutelage. How many of you are Master Gardeners? Thousands I know and there may even be tens of thousands.

There is always a waitlist to get into the course. Heck, my own wife took the Master Gardener course (and exam). She learned how to garden from Julie Riley, not from me.

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I can assure the nongardening reader every one of us has attended a conference on some aspect of gardening that was organized by Julie Riley. Annual Greenhouse conferences, the early Herb Society Conferences, the Alaska Botanical Garden's annual spring confabs—if there was something going on out there in terms of outreach to area gardeners, you just had to dig only a tiny bit to find Julie's fine hand, green thumb and terrific attitude. She is going to be missed.

And, even if you don't garden, you have been impacted by Julie's work. When we lost so many plants from the botanical garden as a result of low snow one year, Julie did the assessment and report. She led the charge to set up the Master Gardener's entrance display gardens every year at the botanical garden and lots of other places around town.

She manned countless CES booths at any and every number of venues. She did research, gave talks, organized and taught classes and as if that were not enough, volunteered her time for all manner of projects. Come to the party and you will learn even more ways she has reached out, quietly, and made this city's life better.

Friends, Julie is off to Fairbanks. Our tremendous loss is the Golden Heart City's great gain. Treat her well, sister city to the north. And for those of you here in Southcentral, see you this Sunday.

Jeff’s Alaska Garden Calendar

Nurseries: Several stay open all yearlong. Now is the time to visit them. You need the warmth and greenery.

Houseplants: Check for bugs

Julie Riley's goodbye party: 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 11801 Brayton Drive, (by the big dome on the northbound frontage road along the Seward Highway.) See you there.

Jeff Lowenfels

Jeff Lowenfels has written a weekly gardening column for the ADN for more than 45 years. His columns won the 2022 gold medal at the Garden Communicators International conference. He is the author of a series of books on organic gardening available at Amazon and elsewhere. He co-hosts the "Teaming With Microbes" podcast.

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